Finding the best WordPress hosting for your needs is no easy task. If you’re an inexperienced blogger, you might have already read some reviews that elaborate on what constitutes a good hosting company. If you haven’t done so, Alex Papaconstantinou got two words for you: technical support. Having started his first WordPress site in 2008 – and having owned many businesses online like Wikigains.com – he is qualified to give you some advice regarding this subject. Here are five things he recommends any blogger needs to know about WordPress Hosting technical support.
1. 24/7 Support
These days, most web hosting companies promise 24/7 support. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that a WordPress hosting expert will immediately respond to your call and help you out with your issue. What’s far more likely is that your call will be answered by an operator with limited technical knowledge. They will then file a ticket for your account, eventually forwarding it to the actual WordPress expert. If you’ve contacted your hosting company on a Friday night, you might not receive any help before Monday.
“One of the things you need to watch as an internet business owner is not to let price be your main decision making factor when it comes to web hosting. Very often, webhosting companies appear to be good and they also offer generous discount coupons and promotional codes. However, they may lack in customer care. If your site is about marketing your business you need to rely on a good webhost” says Alex Papaconstantinou talking from experience.
2. Direct Server Access
In many cases, you might not be able to reach the right support technician. “Let’s say your host is based in London, and that your website is targeting the UK market. If you call a UK number for technical support, you’d probably expect to get a UK-based technician, right? Well, too many times your call will get redirected to a call center somewhere in Asia” says Alex Papaconstantinou who has had too many phone conversations with Asian-based call centers for his voucher site Wikigains.
Though support technicians can manage your server remotely from anywhere in the world, they won’t have direct access to your hardware if they are based outside of your datacenter. They may need to create a ticket and forward it to the right people in the datacenter, which means you might need to wait several hours – or even days – to have your issue resolved.
3. Managing the Servers
Managing a datacenter requires a lot of technical expertise, so it’s no surprise that even some of the good WordPress webhosting providers outsource datacenter management to third parties. “Now, since these third parties own and manage the datacenters on behalf of several webhosting companies. This means that your web hosting provider won’t have direct access to the servers” Alex reveals.
Their technical assistant might be able to provide some help, but their approach will be limited to remote access. One of the best web hosting providers that sell WordPress plans is Hostgator who owns their own servers. If your web hosting provider own their datacentre is good to you as a webmaster. It means that you have a greater degree of flexibility, ability to add custom software in your server, or even manage your own server as you want.
4. The Reseller Issue
This is related to the previous example, but many hosting companies simply resell hosting packages under their brand, without actually owning the servers. As you might imagine, this means that any technical support you get will be inferior to the one provided by companies that have their own technical infrastructure. We’ve already established why this is not a perfect situation to find yourself in.
5. Finding the Best WordPress Hosting Service
If a WordPress webhosting provider has caught your eye, the first thing you should do is test their support team. Simply get in touch with the WordPress hosting company of your choice, and check their integrity and responsiveness. The best time to do this would be during the night or over the weekend.
The best WordPress hosting companies will respond promptly, answer your questions knowledgeably and ask you to provide feedback on their work. If you’re satisfied with their answers and response time, chances are that they will always provide the same level of support in the future.
